challenge question was c, the u.s. mint mints 4.3 billion pennies each year and they aren't made of much copper anymore. 97.5% of a penny is zinc. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. i will see you next week. stay tuned for "reliable sources." w50e6 reached a point in the campaign with the media seem determines to set agenda. where does the press get off telling a candidate to open up about his religion? and journalists keep pressing rick santorum about his stand on birth control and he is pushing back. >> when you quote a supporter of mine who tells a bad off-color joke and somehow i'm responsible for that, that's gotcha. >> is the press trying to paint santorum as intolerant? tucker carlson's pwebsite

launches an attack on media matters saying they gave marching orders to msnbc. >> the line we had from someone at media matters was we basically write their prime time. >> based on what? there's a troubling memo about investigating the personal lives of folks at fox. we'll have a report. plus, buzz businessen injbi jeremy lynn. why do journalists keep tweeting their way into trouble. and meet washington television reporter andrea mccarran whose story about underage drinking sparked a huge reaction. >> andrea says she's been stunned and heart broken to find herself subjected to online name calling too foul to spell out on tv. >> a harassment campaign against her and her teenage kids. i'm howard kurtz, and this is "reliable sources."

now that mitt romney has lost his front-runner status, at least according to the fleeting snapshot provided by national polls, some pundits in their infinite wisdom are giving him advice, and the media microscope increasingly focusing on his faith. >> as mitt romney continues to battle for the republican nomination, the question of faith continues to be in focus. whether americans are becoming more accepting of his rge, mormonism. >> because he's been afraid for the lastself years to talk about his mormonism because of some questions some people have especially in the bible belt, probably the area where he could most touch hearts and most testified to his humanity he's kind of blocked off from doing. >> "new york times" columnist frank bruney says that's precisely where the mormon question is fair game. there are valid reasons he writes for the rest of us to hone in on romney's religion,

not in terms of its historical eccentricities but in terms ever its cultural, psychological, and emotional imprint on him. his aloofness, guardedness, and sporadic defensively, are these entwined with the experience of blnging to a minority tribe that has often been maligned and has operated in secret? scott conroy for real clear politics and cbs news. frank, rooney, start with you. so why is romney's faith or why should it be any of the media's business? >> well, i think when you're running for president, the public, the media, we have a right to know as much as we can about you. we want to take your full measure as a human being, and if a big part of your biography, if a big part of who you are is your religious faith, then i think that needs to be discussed. i think it's wise for the candidate himself to discuss it. and i think it's entirely fair game for us to ask questions about it. you're running for president of the united states. highest office there is.

we need to know who you are, where you're coming from, what animates you, what's important to you. >> but, jennifer, ruand you hav been very supportive of mitt romney, is it fair for the press when a candidate doesn't want to talk about his religion. >> it's perfectly acceptable. we don't grill joe lieberman on whether he believes slavery in the old testament is still acceptable. there's a level at which in terms of doctrine that we don't think it's appropriate because we don't have religious tests in the united states. what is appropriate is to ask the question that's been asked many times in the debates and have been answered by these candidates and that is, how does your faith affect your judgment? how does your faith affect your politics? >> are you suggesting that the press sim posing some kind of religious test on romney. >> i am suggesting they have honed in uniquely on him as opposed to catholics or people

of other faiths and secondly, he has every right to talk about i don't particularly want to talk about this. i think it's a little out of context. the real drum beat has been from the right telling romney to talk more about the economics and talk more about a specific agenda. >> should the press be in the position of ciriticizing romney for not talking about something that's so personal? >> i think pretty much every reporter likes to think they would be a great political operative if given the opportunity. a lot of roeporters look at romney and say this guy should be surging ahead of everyone in the poll. he should be the de facto nominee. he's struggling, why is that? that's the tendency to analyze especially with twitter around all the social media that puts us all in the same boat together. >> we are full of advice. frank rooney, coming wback to your point, if you're running for president your life needs to be an open books. >> most everything. >> but is there a danger here that this media narrative veers

off into the strangeness as some people view it of mormonism? >> well, i actually think the media has been very responsible in that regard. and what i'm calling for what i was suggesting in that column isn't that we look at the most outrageous doctrines or tenents of mormonism. i was saying mitt could help himself if he talked more about it. one of his big problems as a candidate is he doesn't always come across as a full-fledged rounded human being, a certain warmth doesn't come across. and i was wondering if that column and i think a lot of people do rightly wonder, is part of that because he's sectioning off a part of himself, a very important part of his biography and not giving us access to it, not giving himself access to it on the stump. >> you say you're trying to help romney -- >> i'm not in the interest of trying to help anyone. i think what i was trying to say is i wasn't saying we need to look at every little byway of mormonism and how it applies to him. i don't disagree in large

measure with what jennifer said earlier. i think when he i hdid d edits he closes himself off to us. >> i think there have been some spreads that skr behave been favorable. but "the washington post" and "the new york times" as his role as a lay leader in the mormon chum church. that showed a human side. he has talked a little bit about his role in mentoring people who have had problems, and i actually think without getting into religious doctrine, simply talking about his experiences with people in need, people in trouble would be helpful to him. >> one thing that's in the news lately -- >> go ahead frank. >> jennifer is exactly right. around the time a lot of us were talking about why aren't we hearing mitt romney talk more about his religion, he was getting hammered for being

completely out of touch for anybody who didn't make over $1 million a year. one of the points that a mormon scholar made to me is if you do a mormon mission as mitt romney did for two years in france, you're not living high on the hog. you're mostly trying to convert people at the lower rungs of the economic ladder. he has spent time with people other than gazillioners. he could talk about that if he was willing to access the mormon dimensions of his biography. >> he was asked about this practice of mormons baptizing dead people and he said i have but not recently. i don't know if that's fair game or not. he said it, obviously it's news. it's news now because of his position in the polls, but it does make me wonder a little bit about the tone of the coverage going forward. i want to turn to rick santorum on cbs this morning the other day he got into it with charlie rose and had to do with a joke a bad joke, that was told by a

santorum financial supporter, froster frees. when frees said, wlell, in my dy women practiced birth control by putting an aspirin between their knees. >> when you quote a supporter of mine who tells a bad joke and i'm responsible for that, that's gotcha. >> nobody said you were responsible. they said how would you characterize and what have you said to him, not that you were responsible. >> you don't do this with president obama. with president obama what you did was you went out and defended him against someone who he sat in a church for for 20 years and defended him that, oh, he can't possibly believe what he listened to for 20 years. it's a double standard. this is what you're pulling off, and i'm going to call you on it. >> does santorum have a legitimate beef that the media have a double standard. >> he stayed foster frees was a supporter. he's much more than a supporter.

second of all, he brought up the jeremiah wright situation with president obama, candidate obama in 2008. you have to remember it is the media that brought that out into the forefront. it was the mccain campaign -- >> abc was one of the organizations. but let me go back to frank. santorum does talk about religiously themed things. he talked about a couple years ago a speech about satan corrupting the institutions of america. yesterday he accused president obama of having a phony theology. he contends and his campaign contends that we in the press are trying to paint him one dimensionally as a candidate solely of social issues. is there something to that? >> you know, i actually don't think so. we shouldn't be one dimensional with him and i think he -- there's a little bit of truth to the fact that we pay more attention sometimes to those things than to other aspects of his platform, but essex ub rantly and willingly wading into these waters. we're not labeling him a cull kurl wattor from nowhere.

he's putting on the armor and grab the lance. he believes this stuff, he wants to talk about it, but when it become the entire foreground of the conversation, he gets upset. i think he's not being entirely honest. >> but his campaign tells me that the media are minimizing his other positions on manufacturing jobs and so forth. let's face, it birth control, abortion, gay marriage, these are hot button issues that make good copy. >> two things. first of all, it's not fair game for him to say don't play gotcha with froster frees because he himself haas made outrageous outlandish statements and that's what -- >> he's saying i shouldn't be held responsible 230r for a bad joke said by somebody else. >> yes, but it's very fair game to talk about his own statements and his own positions which are really far outside even the mainstream of the republican party. >> what about the double standard charge? >> that's for people like you and me to talk about. he's a candidate. he should stop whining about the media's double standards. i think the candidates have gotten, particularly on the right, and i will talk to my

friends on the rye, have gotten obsessed with this. ronald reagan won the presidency twice with no fox news, with no talk radio, with no blogs. these candidates should grow up, get the message out, there's lots of other media outlets to get their message out. >> i think we have to be careful about holding candidates of different parties to the same standard. on that point we will leave it there. jennifer, frank, scott, thanks for joining us. when we come back, tweeting into trouble. david carr of the nor"new york times" on how far journalists can go in the twitter world. you know when i grow up,

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tweeting can be dangerous to your journalistic health. it became even more obvious after cnn suspended roland martin for a couple tweeter groups during the souper bowl. is the problem pundits keep crossing an invisible line? i tackled that subject earlier. david carr, alaska. . >> nice to be with you. >> you tweeted nearly 17,000 times which makes me feel like a slacker. did what happened to roland

martin make you think about what you post? >> yeah. you know, i should make clear, one, that i'm not proud of the fact that i have tweeted that much and i'm ashamed that you have mentioned that. two, that many, many of those are retweets. so all i'm doing is seeing something and pushing the button, so it's not like i have actually written 17,000 tweets, although please don't do the math on how many i've actually done. three, what happened to roland, yes, he's a cautionary tale, as are many, many others. it seems like a friction-free, easy little push of the button, we often do it on our little phones, right? it doesn't even seem like much of a big deal. but if you have a significant following or even a following of certain folks, you can end up in a big bad jam in a hurry. >> well, do you like having that direct and unfiltered connection to people who follow you? is that part of the appeal or

the seduction of twitter? >> yes. i mean, i do a combination of sort of i guess what jeff jarvis has called mind casting, which is i might see something that you wrote or someone else wrote and write a twitter and put the link in there and say, you know, people should look at that. but then the other night i tweeted out the fact that i went to the betsy johnson show with my 14-year-old just thinking, i don't know, that it was -- she's my kid, so i'm proud of the fact that she wanted to go out to the show, and a friend of mine just sent me a note and said, really? you're really tweeting about going to a show -- >> i think people like getting on the inside into the personal lives of those of us who are in the media, but let's come back to this question of how opinion yated you can be. you're a "new york times" guys, but this is your personal

account. as long as you're not being abusive or inaccurate, why can't you say pretty much what you want? >> well, i can say pretty much what i want until it makes a problem for my ownership or for me. so i generally try to read my tweets with my boss' eye. that doesn't mean i haven't sent out a few i don't regret. i have never gotten talked to at work about it, but i think if the general tenor of my twitter stream made them uncomfortable, somebody would talk to me about it. we don't really have a policy per se, but people at our shop have gotten in a little bit of a jam for like tweeting out private business matters or we had one reporter that tweeted out personal matters that they didn't like. so, you know, i love having the ability not just to tweet out

but to listen, and there's no risk in listening. you can look in and be a lurker on twitter. >> it's a great two-way communication. i really like that. but to the extent, david, that you are thinking about, okay, how is this going to look to the bosses at the office in manhattan, doesn't that tend to drain some of the personality from twitter? >> yeah, it's been a real problem for me. i have had trouble getting followers. i only have 350,000 so i guess i'm -- there's something bloodless and sort of without -- no, i think i know and understand that twitter, while at the same time understanding that whatever chip got implanted to me when i went to work in "the new york times," it's planted deep enough that hopefully i won't screw up that often. >> what about the fact that journalists are kind of giving it away on twitter. your first impressions on a lot of breaking controversies, and i wrestle this as well, instead of

posting it for "the new york times" which actually takes a little time, you're doing the 140 characterings off on twitter. is that something you think about? >> i try not to break news on twitter. i do feel like "the new york times" pays my salary and that if i'm going to break news, i should break news there. in terms of annotating events in progress and giving my opinion about them, i think the value accrues to both my employer and to me. we all go through the math of do i break off what i'm doing in little bitty bits or do i save it all for the newspaper or for the web, and i do think that's math we all have to confront as journalists. >> i think it's a dilemma for journalists and at the same time you want to be part of the rolling conversation on twitter. somebody else says you have written who recently joined

twitter is rupert murdoch. he doesn't exactly censor himself for opinions. he's written some nice things about rick santorum's presidential candidacy and took a short at andrew cuomo calling him chicken cuomo. does that raise questions about the news organization that is murdoch controls? >> no. i think that's very congruent with what people expect him to do. i think it's been a good luck into the inside of his head. he's rupert murdoch. he lives a life beyond consequence, let's face it. he controls his board. he can pretty much do what he wants. and i think he oddly understands twitter and what it can do, and it's been good. i mean, i don't think it's a bulletin to anybody who follows rupert murdoch or reads the news that he's somewhat conservative in thinks political views. >> and not to put too fine a point on it, who is going to tell him not to. david carr from "the new york times," thanks very much for joining us. >> always a pleasure to talk to you, howie.

coming up in the second part of "reliable sources" the conservative daily collar. plus the backlash against a washington television reporter after her story about underage drinking. and later, why the media are making a huge hero of basketball's jeremy lin. hello, how can i deliver world-class service for you today ? we gave people right off the street a script and had them read it. no, sorry, i can't help you with that. i'm not authorized to access that transaction.

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the daily caller is a conservative website trun by tucker carlson who doubles as a fox news commentator. media matters has openly targeted fox for a right wing bias. this memo came from carl fritsche. we should hire private investigators to look into the personal lives of fox news anchors, hosts, reporters, prominent contributors, senior network and corporate staff. private investigators? personal lives? anything happen as a result? joining us now to talk about the way these articles were report sd vince, senior online editor for the daily caller. welcome. >> thank you. >> what do you make of that

memo? >> it's pretty jarring. this is a tax exempt organization looking to use -- go after fox level employees who work inside the company and to place yard signs on their lawns to buy advertising on billboards in their communities, targeting them personally. so this is some pretty shocking stuff. >> just to be clear, there is no evidence any of this happened. this was a memo that suggested these things. >> i'm sure the tracking mechanisms of media matters have existed in terms of the he can at the point to which private investigators have been involved, not that we're aware. >> we asked media matters to make somebody available, david brock is not able to come on, the founder, because he has a book coming out. carl fritsche, the former executive who wrote the memos, didn't respond. and tucker carlson said he could not come on because he has a contract with fox. they go through a list of reporters and accuses some of them of doing media matters

bidding based on a couple anonymous sources. that seemed pretty thin to me. >> these aren't people just leaving the building on janitorial business. these are serious people. we're asking our -- >> serious people who you're not able to name. >> that's absolutely right, but our goal is the truth. our goal is to tell the truth about this organization and we're doing that and we have to do it via anonymous sources. our goal is to get on the record sources. >> how would you feel if i wrote a story saying anonymous sources say vince is doing the bidding of foster frees who has given millions of dollars to the daily caller. you would say that's not true and i would say well, i have some source wos say it's true. >> i would say it wasn't true, that's right, but it's something media matters hasn't done. they haven't offered a r

refutati refutation. i would tell what you the truth is. i'd offer evidence in order to prove it wasn't the truth. so what you're suggesting is exactly what media matters hasn't done. >> we're going to give them that opportunity perhaps next week. now, i get lots of maims from media matters. i also get e-mails from media research center which is brent's conservative media watch dog group and sometimes if they have interesting video or transcripts, i use that. so you seem to paint as sinister anybody who uses anything dug up by that group. >> what we do have is anonymous sources saying they were capable of getting this material into the hands of people that we know, people across the board, ben smith formerly of politico, msnb c, they claim they wrote their entire prime time lineup. >> anybody who has head ben's stuff over the year sees he's a fair reporter. what you didn't have was, okay, here is a litany of things that so-and-so wrote and this matches

the media matters talking points and they didn't tell the other side. you just had again these sources saying that these folks in effect were in the tank. >> and these are source that is are unimpeachable. >> but what's very impeachable is the notion you didn't connect the dots by demonstrating ou these reporters were unfair. >> unfair to whom? the idea is this, that media matters employees, former and current, claim that these people will run their content. now wrshtion do we go from there? you're right. you have to look and see to the extent to which these people have done it. in our coverage you will see something inside our story where we talk about a media matters source who claims they have something called fingerprint coverage where they like to get this content into people's hands without their names being cited. >> same thing with msnbc, it's no secret tucker carlson was let go by msnbc. maybe the people on ms thi smsn believe some of the same things the liberal hosts do.

you didn't connect the dots. >> but you're making the leap to the idea that media matters -- first of all, remember, we had a source that said they were practically writing their prime time lineup. you're making some leap that because we publish this, that we're making this claim that they only use media matters content to do their bidding. we have media matters irn ternal sources, remember, people inside of any corporation are going to say they use our stuff and they will probably proclaim it. that's what we have had happen. >> david rock, the head of media matters, is portrayed as being paranoid, erratic, a bit unhinged, and a user of illegal drugs.irresponsible? >> david brock has talked about his illegal drug use in the past. remember, these are not right wingers, conservatives that are coming out saying this. these are dedicated leftist progressive wos want to ensure their place in the movement. so they offer these comments in

this way. >> jack schaefer wrote say the daily caller is attacking media matters with bad journalism and lame propaganda. your response? >> we put a lot of great reporters on this piece and we really enjoyed what we presented and we they we have a phenomenal story. >> thanks for joining us. up next, andrea mccarran on the harassment campaign that erupted afterive reports on underage drinking here in washington. all energy development comes with some risk,

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it was a classic example of aggressive local reporting. andrea mccarran found that high school students have easy access to liquor and found a d.c. source selling booze to kids as young as 14. >> reporter: watch what happens when 19-year-old jen attempts to buy alcohol at this beer and wine store. >> it was too easy. it was just way too easy. >> reporter: she bought a bottle of wine no questions asked. we are with channel 9 news. we've been watching your store for weeks and weeks and you've been selling to underage children. it is illegal to sell under 21. >> no i.d., no sale.

>> reaction a campaign of abuse and of mccarran. >> andrea says she's been stunned and heart broken to find herself subjected to online name calling too foul to spell out on tv and threats that the cops took so seriously they posted a police car in front of her home all weekend long. >> so how does a journalist cope with this kind of backlash? andrea mccarran joins me now in the studio. welcome. let's start at the beginning. why did you feel so strongly about doing this series of stories? >> it's so interesting. this basically start as a series of reports on underage drinking and drug use, and what we ended up uncovering was a disease of affluence. and an epidemic of entitlement. it feels like teenagers feel they have the right to have cell phones, have laptop computers, and in this case that they have the right to break the law and drink illegally. and as you have and so many journalists, we are on these

crash sites preventable accidents when kids get behind the wheel and die. and i just could not interview another set of grieving parents. and not try to do something to expose the problem. >> and yet it was parents, some of them at least, in an affluent area of suburban maryland when you reported on a party where there was a lot of liquor, who didn't like your reporting. >> we were absolutely stunned. we covered a party that, like a lot of these, started as a small gathering, got on social media, facebook and twitter, spiraled out of control. ultimately there were 80 high school students at this party. we were with police when it was busted. they fled. they were jumping off balconies, out of windows fleeing in all directions, and then the paernts ca parents came to pick them up. one father at another party said to his son right in front of police, why didn't you run? other parents threatened to sue us, threatened to sue police.

only one mother actually said to her child, you cannot do what the other children do. and she made this young man apologize to every police officer on the scene. >> and what happened to that d.c. liquor store owner? >> just a few hours ago, in fact, he was arrested and taken into police custody for selling alcohol to a minor on a sting that went down last night, and we were along for that. what i found astonishing is that even after our series of reports, even after we exposed him as a long-time supplier of alcohol to teenagers as young as 14, he was still selling. >> he didn't change his practices. >> not at all. >> tell me about this backlash and how bad has it been for you? >> it's been horrible. particularly for my teenage children. it has been what i believe is an orchestrated campaign of hate and venom and name-calling and threats, things that i can't

even say on the air. >> and this has been mostly in e-mails, been on facebook? >> everywhere. every possible place that it could be posted. you know, like a lot of journalists, i have covered stories from parts of the world that are considered very, very dangerous. yet the only time i have ever genuinely been in fear for my family is after covering the illegal behavior of suburban mostly white teenagers. >> to the point where as your fellow anchor noted, you had to have police protection at your house. >> yes. >> how did you feel, to ask a very obvious question, when your high school age kids were being insulted and harassed as a result of your stories? >> like you, we've known each other a long time, family comes first. and i am very proud of the reporting we've done, but when it became very clear that this series of reports was taking a very tough toll on my family, i spoke with my boss and we both

agreed, while this fever pitch of hate was so high, it was time just to settle back down. i was very fortunate to have a colleague like derek mcginnty pick up where i left off, stayed off the car, things calmed down, for about a week. >> does it give the impression you allowed yourself to be intimidated? >> no, because i promptly got back on the air. it began was a weak-long series, and now we plan to have a station commitment exposing some of these things over the course of a year. >> you sound, andrea, not just hurt by what happened but disappointed that people in affluent communities around the washington area blame the media. >> i got a really goot glimpse of law enforcement and what they go through on these party scenes. the other thing that really has struck me is how enabling some of these parents are. they're not allowing law enforcement in when there's a party bust that's going down. right in front of us, a father

said, well, did you see my daughter drinking? you know, they never -- they lash out at everyone but their own child with the exception of that one parent. and we have gotten -- i've been very fortunate to get a ground swell of support from some parents, but i get the teenagers being angry that we've outed their activity and that we have cut off one of their major liquor suppliers, but i don't understand parents who condone this behavior and it seems that everybody is upset when some child dies. >> a good look at the after effects of important reporting. andrea mccarran, thanks very much for joining us. after the break, we'll wade into whether the media are embarrassing themselves with the linsanity over the nba's newest star player. plus ed rendell wants to buy philadelphia's taildaily newspa. while protecting our environment. across america, these technologies protect air -

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have more fiber than other leading brands. they're the better way to enjoy your fiber. i've been a sports fan a long time and i have rarely seen the kind of hyperventilating that has surrounded the new york knicks basketball player jeremy lin. >> jeremy lin came out of nowhere. now he's suddenly dominant. >> front page of the new york

post. thrill-lin. the back page of the daily news. look at the back page of the new york post. >> joining us from philadelphia to talk about this is "vanity fair's" buzz bissinger. you wrote about this for the daily beast. you made no bones about it, you said this is mainly because he's asian american and if a black player had had a few good games and scored a bunch of points, it would have been no big deal. >> i feel that very strongly. i know people don't like to hear it, but i think it's the truth, and it's not just me. there were two philadelphia 76ers interviewed and in a very measured way, an all-star this year and mo williams said the same thing. i think we have certain expectations for every racial class and i think the

expectations for african-americans is they're supposed to be good at sports. i don't think there would be this this type of outpouring. i think whites identify with jeremy lin. he's of a different nationality in a sense but they like what he represents, hard work, hustle, et cetera. >> what about the media's coverage here? there was this incredible headline on espn describing jeremy lin chink in the armor. that was taken down. i just got handed a piece of paper, espn announcing the employee who was responsible for that headline was fired and the anchor who read it was suspended for 30 days. thach that was just one example of the media's play on words about lin's heritage. >> chink in the armor is definitely offensive. i will not say what the penalty should or should not be. it's hard to believe it got in but espn does this all the time. they do offensive things and then try to backtrack. i think some of the other stuff,

frankly, is not that big a deal. the fortune cookie thing didn't bother me. i made a spoof of it. i said what i wrote was going to be offensive. it probably was. it was about michael vick and jeremy lin opening a restaurant together. you know, this stuff is going to happen, and i think in a sense we have to get over it. it certainly hasn't hindered jeremy lin's popularity, and, you know, i don't think -- i don't think it rises to the level of calling him a gook or a kike. people are having fun with it. >> i want to turn to something you wrote about the philadelphia papers, the enquirer and daily news which were taken over by a couple hedge funds. now they're up for sale and the guy who may buy them is ed rendell, the former democratic national chairman. you think that's a terrible idea. why? >> well, it is a terrible idea.

i mean the consortium he's heading up, they're all political, very powerful. they cover the waterfront from big development to sports. you name it, they cover it. it. and it's not their political slant. that doesn't matter. these guys are news makers. ed rendell is a huge news maker. these guys are involved in a lot of things that effect the city. i think it'll have a chilling effect. here's a hypothetical. what if when he knew about the sandusky situation and didn't want to get into it or tell the general attorney about it. that is not out of the rem of possibility. is that going to run? i don't think so. >> the dangers of corporate ownership. and they go off the editorial newsroom functions from the business side. but the ceo now told the editors

they'd be fired if they ran anything about the impending sale without approval. the editor larry pratt confirmed it. rendell responded to criticisms by saying just yesterday you think it's the first time some political person owns a newspaper. i tried to get into this to do something good. >> he doesn't get it. it is not his politics. ed is a liberal democrat. the enquirer has liberal and so has the daily news. he is a news maker. the way they're going to cover news. and it's not just rendell. it's his friends who -- ed knows more people in the state who will be constantly whispering in his ear they shouldn't be doing that. ed can't you do something? he is a huge news maker. hurst didn't have the pedigree ed has. governor, mayor, attorney general, 24 years in the public spotlight.

and the guys he's with are almost just as bad. they're blind to their power. they seek power. and they hate the media. >> well, as he says he wouldn't be not just the first political person but the first businessman to own a ownership. zuckerman owns the daily news. if the sale goes through, we'll have you back to talk about the impact. thanks very much for joining us on both these topics. and maybe on jeremy lin as well. still to come, reflections on andy shdid who died in syria. and pat buchanan's bitter divorce from msnbc. or choose aleve and two pills for a day free of pain. way to go, coach. ♪ way to go, coach. the hyundai genesis. in a new, faster-acting formula.

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time now for the media monitor our weekly looks at the hits and errors in the business. it was fitting in some way anthony shadid died in syria gathering information on the regime. he was one of the most courageous journalists of his time. he combined that bravery with a fierce dedication to telling the story of the troubled middle east. and brilliant writing that rose

above this or that battle to weave gripping narratives. shadid won two pulitzer prizes in iraq. what did america leave behind? what kind of society? what kind of government? what kind of landscape? shadid had a long history of close calls. he was shot a decade ago in the west bank. and last year he was caught in libya and abused. anthony shadid was 43. whitney houston's memorial yesterday captured focus of his death. now the focus has been on her early career. although her problems haven't been ignored. bill o'reilly is disgusted by the coverage. >> we the media look the other way on whitney houston. everyone knew she was a drug addict for two decades.

>> you said this. you said the media has to bleeping clue how to cover the death of whitney houston. because she was dying for years and many looked away. bill, i have seen dozens of stories over the years detailing the addiction, the erratic behavior, the denial of addiction. >> o'reilly has half a point. sometimes the media treats addiction as a side show than a serious suicidal problem. but he wants to crusade against drug abuse. pat buchanan has been forced out at msnbc and he's not happy about it. the commentator and former nixon aide seemed increasingly out of step at a network that the move sharply left. but he calls an incessant clamber from the left and he took his case to sean hannity at

fox news. >> it is quite clear the people of media matters and the others are saying what buchanan says doesn't deserve to be heard. we don't want to challenge it. it should be perge purged from the air. i think they're engaged in a blacklist, sean. >> but he has no evidence they caved to outside pressure. it's true that liberal critics denounced his new book for its inflammatory look on race. and msnbc president phil griffin says they aren't appropriate for a national conversation. but buchanan has been saying this stuff for decades. he hasn't changed. it's msnbc that no longer felt comfortable with buchanan. said in a statement they strongly disagree with the decision to dump boou can nan. i suspect we haven't heard the